I remember the tailor-only Frozen Shadoweave set which had to be nerfed because it was so ridiculously well itemised, since it had massive +Shadow damage and very little to no stamina on it. They were a lot less strict about the stat balance on individual pieces of gear back then.

Except that haunt now consumes a soul shard that can be obtained only via soul drain reliably. Agony needs to stack to 10 to do full damage and it must be refreshed manually as reapplying or it’s a dps loss. Agony and Affliction can be refreshed by fel flame, save that it is not refresh but extension by 6 sec, they also have different lengths.

Not a big fan of bazillion button rotation, plus more added in this patch.

Just in comparison the mage design remained fairly consistent.

Then again how do you balance a warlock – a dps class that can do direct damage, dot, self heal, have usable pets and spammable cc?

Beats me but I can understand why mage (direct damage, utility, no self heals, no pets save water elemental, spammable cc) is the favourite child.

Like The Dancing Hare, I am leveling (low 70’s and counting) my ’lock as Destro and I cannot believe the amount of fun I’m having. I’ve been struggling to determine who my Mist persona will be – my raiding hunter will be retiring to his humble treehome in the woods of Dolannar after 5 years of service – and I think the destro is so much fun that it will win out over the fury warrior and blood DK as my new ”identity.” When playing this character, I truly feel like how I believe a warlock should feel – that they are superior to all and its only by fate and chance of unlikely goodwill that anything or anyone in their immediate vicinity survives destruction.

Destro is great but it seems sitautional in a way. Given like Spine of DW. The tendon have your 4Burning embers for 3chaos bolts than a Shadowburn. Dont even dps the first phase and dps the tendon phase and watch yourself climb the charts.(quite hilarious) But is it me or does there seem to not be a constant flow of high sustained dps. Where Afflic seems to have some amazing constants. (hits even harder at 25% but the downfall is dot uptime. You can only really get a few good ticks of Drain Soul before you immediately have to refresh a haunt than a corrupt than a agony and UA. The mal grasp seems fine better than a shadowbolt filler IMO, but again just a need of refreshing your dots because haunt/drain soul doesnt anymore -_-…. Let me know what you think.

P.S. Demo just seems to be mana deprived and kind of sucks now not really good dps to me anyway.

About CWM

Cynwise's Warcraft Manual is a weblog about many facets of the World of Warcraft: PvP battlegrounds, digital avatars, warlock theory, and having fun with alternate play styles are common topics.